> Stuart Murray wrote:
I am thinking of expanding my fleet at the moment and it goit me onto thinking
about 'realistic' fleet sizes.
I was thinking that each 'power' such as NAC, NSL etc would have limited
resources and budget (much like no) plus there is the balance between domestic
and military spending so I was trying to guess just how many space ships do
the NSL have in thier fleet?
I was wondering if anyone has any idea what the current wet anvy sizes are for
the US, UK and German Navy. I though tthis may give me a couple of pointers in
the right direction. OK so space is bigger and more area needs patrolling, but
I was just curious about fleet compositions.
> Stuart Murray wrote:
I was thinking along the lines of the NSL may have -say- four fleet
carriers, 5 superdreadnoughts and so on. It seemed to me that although navies
such as the US have extensive budgets they do not have many flet carriers or
major battleships. I thought that this may be readily extended into a space
fleet.
OK, so another reason why I was thinking about fleet sizes is that I looked
recently at the Bifrost NSL page, he has a photo of a huge fleet, I was
impressed plus I thought the if it were 'real' then surely it would represent
a large proportion of the entire NSL fleet.
> I was thinking along the lines of the NSL may have -say- four fleet
I may be wrong here...but I think the US has close to 14 carrier battle
groups...thats carrier and support ships. Although that 14 does seem a little
high. I am remembering something my history proffesor said. Maybe its only
about 6 or 7.
Chris
> >Another source of information for this could be found in the
> I was thinking along the lines of the NSL may have -say- four fleet
I found Trillion Credit Squadron and it lists a rough formula of an annual
naval budget of 500Cr x Population x Government modifier. The standing navy is
a factor of 10 times the annual budget.
Converting Traveller credits to Full Thrust points is approximate, but based
on a destroyer design and an FT cost of 100, 20MCr = 1 FT Pt. It seems high,
since a 2 Billion population world would generate
50,000 FT points per year. Divide by ten and we have a 2 Billion
world with a budget of 5,000 pts and a fleet of size 50,000 pts.
Rounding... 4 Carriers 4,000 5 SDN 5,000 10 BDN 8,000 16 BB 8,000
40 CA 10,000
40 CE 8,000 40 CL 8,000 80 DD 8,000 60 FF 5,000 40 CT 3,000
> Divide by ten and we have a 2 Billion
So this is the fleet per world?
Considering the balkanisation of the 'offical' history this would have to be
divided among a lot of competing factions.
> Stuart wrote:
> Divide by ten and we have a 2 Billion
So this is the fleet per world?
Considering the balkanisation of the 'offical' history this would have to be
divided among a lot of competing factions.
Stuart
----
I'm just winging it. We don't have a good idead from the FT background the
various numbers of worlds and colonies or the economic power and strength of
these worlds.
A good URL to find current World Navy data is the Naval and
maritime Virtual library. It's at http://www.iit.edu/~vlnavmar/
I found a link off of this page for the Japanese navy for names for Allan
Goodall's Age of Iridium pBeM scenario. Good hunting.
<< I may be wrong here...but I think the US has close to 14 carrier battle
groups...thats carrier and support ships. Although that 14 does seem a little
high. I am remembering something my history proffesor said. Maybe its only
about 6 or 7. >>
Yep, quite impressive, esp. for an German like me. When ya hear the carrier xy
was send to Z, alwas means an TF around
10-to
20 ships were send out, carriers never go alone. We in germany only have 3 or
4 Frigates plus half a douzen DD's or so.
Alex
> At 10:06 AM 9/19/97 -0500, you wrote:
How would a planet of 2 billion come up with this kind of GNP? To me this
looks more like the budget and Fleet for a coop of planets.
> At 01:32 PM 9/19/97 -0400, you wrote:
Isn't it closer to 4 active?
> Joseph A. Troche wrote:
True, it could also pass for a fleet with a subsector responsibilities of
protecting eight to ten star systems or more. But given how violent and
bloodly the Full Thrust combat system is, how long could this fleet be in full
combat operations against a similarly determined enemy? The numbers are high
because fleet losses are sudden and costly.
Also these figures are only considering the FTL component of the fleet not the
System Defense Forces without FTL drives.
> On Thu, 18 Sep 1997, Jonathan Davis wrote:
> > >Another source of information for this could be found in the
Only problem is that no one colony world will have this level of population. I
can see this as a sector fleet, maybe, with the population
spread over a dozen or more planets - but even then, it seems too large
a population. Alot of planets could well have only a few million people, many
less, so it would take a big sector to field a fleet this massive...60
Frigates???!
It's entirely possible that an entire POWER wouldn't have 2 billion
people...the ESU does certainly, and maybe the NAC, possibly the PAU or IC,
but the rest? The OU, FCT, etc? I can't see it... And a lot of the
powers that could have 2 bill. have industrial-base problems or tech
probs - esp. the PAU, probably...maybe the IC.
My $0.02....
In message <3.0.32.19970920060719.006abaac@spiritone.com>
> "Joseph A. Troche" <trochej@spiritone.com> wrote:
> At 10:06 AM 9/19/97 -0500, you wrote:
Or, it could be the fleet budget for a single person. It all depends on the
prevalent technology. If you have large automated factories, with automated
robotic mining etc, then you feed in a plan for a SDN, and the factory ship
trundles off to the nearest asteroid belt, mines the necessary raw materials,
builds a small fleet of robots, mines more raw meterials, and the robots build
you a shiny new SDN.
Practically no outlay or effort on the part of the humans beyond the initial
factory.
Then you feed in blue prints for another factory, and...
Advanced automation (especially if you have AIs) can lead to big fleets very
quickly in an interstellar economy. Resources are relatively cheap, and labour
can be free.
The above can lead to unplayable campaigns though, so the FT background is
probably somewhere between todays capabilities, and the 'infinite'
capabilities of the above.
But there's no reason why a couple of billion people on some colony world
couldn't field fleets of several tens of thousands of points. The real problem
will be crewing them (which comes back to the AI question).
In message <Pine.OSF.3.95.970920162345.3093C-100000@ccins.camosun.bc.ca>
> Brian Burger <burger00@camosun.bc.ca> wrote:
> Only problem is that no one colony world will have this level of
Let's stick some numbers in. We'll assume the oldest colony worlds have had a
hundred years in which to grow up a population.
Growth After 100yrs Equivalent to...
0.1% x1.1 Approx UK 1% x2.7 Approx USA 2% x7 Third world 3% x19 Third world 4%
x50 About highest I could find.
Colonists are going to be reasonably high tech (so low death rates), but have
few reasons for extensive birth control, so growth rates may well be high.
Also, Earth is probably overburdened with population when the new colony
worlds open up, so very possibly tens of thousands, if not hundreds of
thousands, of people will move to colony worlds.
Even with a initial population of one million, and a 4% growth rate, there
will be only fifty million people on the world after a hundred years.
Billions seem unlikely. If we wanted populations of billions, we could argue
for it, by either having very high birth rates (10% gives x13780 after a
century, which takes a starting population of 100 thousand up to 1.3 billion),
or massive outflux of population from Earth.
I think the largest worlds will have populations in the millions, rather than
billions.
> Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
Everyone
> else doesn't even begin to compare. How's that for a boring setup?
you know how to fix thay.... build all your carriers on a merchant hull make
up some psb and a house rule to explian it...
i have noticed a similar prolbem with escorts. they get shot up or destroyed
pretty bad in most battles, solely because these battles are
one-off games, its a lot easier to kill a destroyer than it is to knock
of an SDN, so most players looking for a body count, go for destroyers and
work their way up the food chain. wheb it seems more logical that everybody go
gunning for the SDN on the basis that it helps the war effort a lot more to
belly up a SDN over a destroyer...
oh well
> On Fri, 19 Sep 1997 DragonProm@aol.com wrote:
I don't think modern fleets are a good benchmark. See below.
> Yep, quite impressive, esp. for an German like me.
True these days...
> We in germany only have 3 or 4 Frigates plus half a douzen DD's or so.
But how many warships did you have in 1915?
I think fleet sizes 1900-1950 are *much* better for benchmarks for
a couple of reasons:
a) There are only two real (surface) fleets in the world today. Everyone
else doesn't even begin to compare. How's that for a boring setup?
b) There is substantial technology difference: Namely vanilla FT does *not*
have anything comparable to long range aircraft or nuclear subs, both of which
greatly affect modern fleet composition.
c) The colonial era, and the naval requirements it brought, is currently
over.
As a sidenote, why do carriers in FT always have support ships around? Try
this for size:
Two standard fleet carriers meet. They send out their fighters.
Each fighter scores an average 1/3 pts. of damage vs. a Sc-2 ship per
turn. Considering the 3 turn combat endurance, we get a projected ONE point of
damage.
Each CV has 36 fighters. Even completely ignoring various defenses, that's a
projected 36 points of damage.
CV's have 49... unless you get lucky and knock out a shield, the result
will be a pointless stand-off.
That's what has always irked me about carriers, especially in one-off
battles: You usually can't hurt them fast enough to stop them launching
fighters, and after they have launched, they're still very durable but nothing
else. Ergo, it makes no sense to shoot at carriers at all (except in
campaigns, or "mopping up").
> On Mon, 22 Sep 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Sep 1997 DragonProm@aol.com wrote:
Everyone
> else doesn't even begin to compare. How's that for a boring setup?
It gets worse than that, as the Russians seem to be letting their fleet rust
in peace, so only the Yanks have a major fleet...
> b) There is substantial technology difference: Namely vanilla FT does
> both of which greatly affect modern fleet composition.
Whereas in FT, we're in the middle of a new colonial era of some sort. Good
point.
> As a sidenote, why do carriers in FT always have support ships around?
So the regular FT CV design bugs you...change it, and rewrite your backgrond
to justify it...no problem...unless your new opponent hasn't heard of your
background...
So does anyone have any figures on the various colonial navies, say
1900-1945? Esp. 1900-1918, the era with, AFAIK, the largest number of
big-fleet powers? I'll check Jane's Fighting Ships later in the week, or
Conway's, but if someone could check sooner, that'd be good...
An aside: What's the Jane's equivilent in FT, in 2183? Jane's Fighting
Starships? Just a thought...
> On Mon, 22 Sep 1997, Brian Burger wrote:
> It gets worse than that, as the Russians seem to be letting their
Actually, I was referring to the British fleet. Russians had a great sub
force, but since WWI their surface fleet has been nothing to write home about.
> So the regular FT CV design bugs you...change it, and rewrite your
Well, if I did that, everyone would just design their own carriers. Actually,
they already do, I was just using the vanilla ship as an example everyone
would be familiar with. The problem's the same with any
ship that's almost completely fighter bays.
If I do a rules change, it would have to be a change to the design rules. But
changes to design rules invalidate prior designs, and are therefore to be
avoided.
Ok, working solutions might include:
Fighter bays only in merchant hulls. Ok, so what about the superdreddies? Over
X fighter bays only in merchant hulls. Not good because of the linear
nature of the design system -- people would just split their carriers to
X-bay chunks.
Each fighter bay deducts Y from hull points (structural integrity blah
blah...). Now this could work.
> So does anyone have any figures on the various colonial navies, say
I have the WWI and WWII memorial editions of Jane's. While not completely
accurate, they give a good enough picture.
> An aside: What's the Jane's equivilent in FT, in 2183? Jane's Fighting
Wouldn't that be the coming Fleet Book?
<< But how many warships did you have in 1915?
I think fleet sizes 1900-1950 are *much* better for benchmarks for
a couple of reasons: >>
Maybe go back to 1500-1800 if ya want many nations with "big" fleets?
In WWII the german fleet was quite small (but advanced because quite new) and
remember there were international contracts regarding to fleet strenghs.
recently I saw a scenario of the "Skagarak Battle" (think you "over there"
call it Juetland) in a museum here, really Impressive to see these two big
fleets battleing each other.
Alex
> On Tue, 23 Sep 1997 DragonProm@aol.com wrote:
> Maybe go back to 1500-1800 if ya want many nations with "big" fleets?
That's another good frame of reference, yes.